Since I’m the guy who made “I like Elves” about 40% of my personality, naturally my interest was piqued when I heard Nexon‘s new MMOARPG Embers of the Uncrowned was all about fighting evil Elves. Of course I’d rather play as the Elves, but as long as they’re involved, I’m there, and the recent Steam Next Fest demo gave me a chance to give it a shot.
EotU‘s opening cinematic wants you to know two things very clearly: Elves are super hot and super evil. The initial orgy of ultra violence and lingering booty shots does tend to set the tone for a lot of the game to come. Seriously, guys, there are so many close-ups of Elf butts in this game. It’s a whole thing.
After the initial cutscene, you’re prompted to choose your class. Unfortunately the options there are pretty limited. They have fancier names, but for all practical purposes, your choices are warrior, mage, and rogue. I went with the Spectral Blade, the rogue analogue.
Visual character customization is pretty deep, as we’ve come to expect from Korean titles. It’s not quite on the level of a Black Desert or an Aion, but you’ll not want for options. While the game uses an isometric camera, cutscenes and the option to zoom your camera in super close will let you see plenty of your carefully crafted character. Classes were gender-locked in the demo, but the character creation screen promises this will not be the case at launch.
Your character is the child of a powerful noble family, and the tutorial has you returning home following the death of your father. You’ll soon find yourself forced to pick up the pieces of your family’s legacy by gathering the common folk under your banner. This introduces Embers of the Uncrowned‘s most distinguishing feature: companions, followers, and building your house.
Aside from the Elfiness, the promise of NPC companions was the main thing that got me interested in EotU. I love combat companions, especially when they’re integrated into the story (as is the case here), and I really wish more action RPGs offered them.
I did feel like EotU‘s implementation was a bit underwhelming, though. There’s a mechanic where your companion can mark enemies, allowing you to do additional damage, but it doesn’t really change how you play since you’d want to be hitting those enemies anyway. There’s some skill customization for the companion, but it’s pretty basic. I also would have liked to have had some in-combat dialogue from the companion. She shows some personality in the story, but not during combat, and that’s disappointing.
One could hope the companion system will be improved between now and launch. I think it has great potential, but in the demo it felt a little undercooked, and that’s a real problem when we’re talking about one of the game’s defining features.
The house system is not player housing as the name might imply, but more “house” in the “noble lineage” sense. You build your house by recruiting followers, gaining control of resources by exploring the world, and constructing various workshops for your followers to crew. These offer services like gear enhancement, mount management, and the like. I like the flavour of this. It’s a mechanic I’ve seen before, but it feels like a good fit for the story of rebuilding your noble legacy.
In general I enjoyed the more low stakes feel of EotU. It wouldn’t surprise me if it eventually turns into another fight for the fate of the world, but at least early on it’s more about reclaiming your birthright as a noble heir and protecting those under your care. There’s a real old school RPG “build yourself up from nothing” vibe to it that I appreciate.
There seems to be a surprising amount of effort put into the lore and worldbuilding (which is to say more than zero). There’s a lot of optional dialogue early on fleshing out the complex political intrigues between not just Elves and humans but also the various competing human noble houses. The translations are pretty solid, too. In a nice touch, there’s even small rewards for completing the dialogue. On the downside, most dialogue isn’t voiced outside of major cutscenes; maybe that will come in the full version.
There is a weird contrast between the relatively grounded story it’s telling most of the time and the ultraviolence and gratuitious ass-shots of the major cutscenes. Sometimes it feels relatively thoughtful for this kind of game, but other times it turns into something out of a fourteen year old boy’s fever dream. In those moments it’s so over the top it kind of circles back around to having a certain kitschy charm, like an old B-movie, but the contrast between the two tones is jarring.
Combat initially reminded me very strongly of Lost Ark, which has its pros and cons. The visual and sound effects are very intense and satisfying, but I’m not fond of everything being cooldown-based, especially in this style of game. I’d rather be looking at the battlefield than watching my action bars to see what’s on cooldown.
A difference compared to Lost Ark is that LA is very much about mowing down massive hordes of weak trash. EotU may get to that at some point, but at least at low levels it’s about smaller scale fights with a more deliberate pace. It’s not super challenging, but you can’t sleepwalk through it, and overall I enjoyed the feel of it.
Unlike most ARPGs, Embers of the Uncrowned exclusively uses WASD movement, with no option for click to move that I could see. Whether that’s good or bad is entirely down to personal taste.
Aside from building your town, progression comes in the form of a fairly generic talent tree, skill gems that provide stat buffs to your abilities, and of course gear. There are some drops, but it looks like progression is going to be more about upgrading gear than finding new pieces. Again, shades of Lost Ark.
EotU‘s business model is not clear to me yet, but a message in the log-in screen promises that the full version “will not sell any paid offers that affect character progression” and anything that affects player power will be earnable in-game.
I was impressed by how active the developers were during the demo. The demo’s Steam page is full of patches and notes on how things will be changed in the full version based on feedback from the demo.
My expectations were very low going into Embers of the Uncrowned, so I am perhaps damning with faint praise, but for what it’s worth, I had more fun with it than I thought I would. It’s messy and cheesy but not without its charms. I’m not sure it’s a game I’d sink a lot of time into, but I’d consider giving it another shot at launch.
What I would like to see changed between then and now is more love given to the companion system, and more or deeper classes. Those feel like its biggest deficiencies right now.
My main concern is that it’s just not doing enough to make itself stand out. It’s going to invite a lot of comparisons to Lost Ark, and I think Lost Ark comes out better in that comparison in most ways. Lost Ark is offering very similar gameplay while being a deeper, more matured game. Then again, Lost Ark is so overwhelmingly dense at this point maybe there could be a market for a lighter alternative.
